Efficient CNN-based disaster events classification using UAV-aided images for emergency response application

Natural disasters can be unpredictable and catastrophic. Even after the event, the repercussions are prolonged due to the incompetence of disaster management strategies. To mitigate the effects of a natural hazard, disaster management teams have to rapidly come forth with innovative plans of action. To contain the damage that a disaster causes, the response time, and preparedness of a disaster management team is crucial. Having a forewarning about the nature of the disaster can prove to be beneficial for the management team. Remote/unreachable areas such as deep parts of the forests, far-flung rural areas, oceans and other hard to reach locations are at a higher risk of receiving poorer aid and response due to the lack of communication and connectivity with the rest of the world. Our paper provides a solution for this particular problem by suggesting UAV/Drones for surveillance and monitoring in these inaccessible, disaster struck areas. The drones not only monitor the situation but constantly click pictures and send them to a base station, where the images are used to collect insights about the type of disaster that has to be dealt with. The paper proposes a deep learning model based on feature concatenation for classification of disasters which can be deployed at the base station, and can receive data in the form of images from a UAV/drone hovering over the affected place. The proposed model is efficient and able to achieve a higher accuracy as compared to the leading CNN models and closely related recent works as well.